Another view (are there any antitrust lawyers out there???): I would argue that Ikon/Alterra and Vail are monopolies. I am empathetic to those who bought multi-resort passes with the intent to use them during only spring break. If their ski vacations got truncated after one day in 2020, they got hosed. For travelers, many resorts do not sell multi-day or other discounted lift tickets anymore, or visitors need to jump into the online reservation fray, and the best option for both cost and potentially not having to deal with reservations/daily lift ticket caps is to get a session/multi-day Ikon or Epic pass. If they've planned on skiing for more than a few days, then a regular season pass starts making a lot of sense. And this is all because there aren't many resort-specific multi-day lift tickets anymore. There are hardly any other discounted lift products anymore, although I think some independents have things where one pays a set amount up front to get a certain percent off walkup lift tickets. Palliwood has a 4-pack, but that wouldn't cover a week-long vacation.
In my view, the shutdown in March 2020 isn't Alterra's fault, but I can see the frustration of those who could barely use their passes that year. The business model is structured so that people favor purchasing season passes for a week-long ski vacation, rather than the old business model of a resort-specific multi-day discount. I distinctly remember pre-Alterra, there was a *crappy* day of skiing at pre-Palliwood (either Xmas day or New Years), and I received a voucher because management acknowledged that the conditions were terrible and lifts closed early, etc. Palliwood could make that decision to reimburse me - despite my having a season pass - because at the time, the pass product wasn't tied in to the current multi-resort pass business model.